Courteous greetings on the occasion of 110th birth anniversary of Malayalam language author Lalithambika Antharjanam. Her published oeuvre consists of nine volumes of short stories, six collections of poems, two books for children, and a novel, Agnisakshi (1976) which won the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award and Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award in 1977. Her autobiography Aathmakadhakkoru Aamukham (An Introduction to Autobiography) is a very significant work. Lalithambika’s life was personally affected by the reformist movements led within the Namboodiri community by pioneering reformers and writer-activists such as V. T. Bhattathiripad who wrote Adukkalayilninnu Arangathekku (From the Kitchen to the Stage) and M. R. Bhattathiripad who wrote Marakkudayile Mahanarakam (The Hell behind the Umbrella Screen).
Her writing reflects a sensitivity to the women’s role in society, and the tension between the woman as a centre for bonding and the woman as an individual. Lalithambika’s life-work was the exposure and destruction of the hypocrisy, violence and injustice with which women were treated in society. Lalithambika’s chosen form was the short story, which she described as “the art form best suited to the powerful interpretation of a comprehensive union of thought and emotion.” Indeed, her stories, while exhibiting a heavy preference for the diegetic narrator, explore the innermost thoughts of abject women (and men) with an immediacy and rawness that contain an urgent social critique.
“I BELIEVE THAT EVEN AS THE ARTIST, MAN OR WOMAN, PULLS DOWN THE GIRDERS OF A NARROW, DECAYED SOCIETY, HE OR SHE MUST ALSO FORGE THE TOOLS TO BUILD A CULTURED AND WHOLESOME NEW STRUCTURE IN ITS PLACE”.
